What to write about

You can write about almost anything that helps people in their cloud native journey. Tutorials, how-to guides, documentation and high-level overviews. On topics including but not limited to Kubernetes and containers in general, storage (inc. databases), machine learning, networking.

In particular our audience is interested in walkthroughs and tutorials on new Kubernetes tools and applications.

We’re not limited to just these topics and formats - we’re always happy to hear your suggestions.

Tutorials submitted will be reviewed by our editors and, subject to any changes we feel appropriate to enhance clarity, published on our site. We'll use your name, your Twitter username and GitHub profile (if you've set them in your profile) to give you credit, and share all published guides to our social media and community feeds. You’ll find more on the editorial process below.

Original content only

We accept original content only. We cannot accept or issue payments for content that has been, in whole or in part:

  • Copied and pasted from elsewhere online
  • Spun or paraphrased from content online
  • Content translated from other languages to English

We use plagiarism checkers along with our own research to detect content that is not unique and original.

Content created for the “Write for Civo” program, in all stages of development, will remain the sole and exclusive property of Civo at all times. Civo may make alterations and edits to the content at any time. Civo reserves the right to remove content at any time.

Submitting a tutorial

Before you create your content piece (tutorial or guide), to be eligible for payment you need to first send us your idea, along with all the requested information via the form at civo.com/write-for-us. We will then let you know if your idea has been accepted and you can continue with writing before submitting your first draft.

You can submit a new tutorial or guide at any time straight from your Civo account. If you do not have a Civo account already you’ll need to sign up at this stage at civo.com/signup.

Once you’re logged in, from your Civo dashboard at civo.com/account you’ll find a nav item for Content > Create Guide. You can then hit the “Create new guide” button to get started.

Alternatively visit civo.com/account/guides to get started. You can then get together your first draft for submission.

Formatting your tutorial

When creating your tutorial, guide or doc, you’ll use Markdown formatting, and need to include a title along with a snippet.

Your Alt Text

  • The 'snippet' will not appear in the guide itself, but is a short description of the guide provided to users on certain pages and on social media links. The snippet is the text under the title in the image here, for example:

Your Alt Text

  • An image for social media is optional, but recommended. Choose a screenshot or something that will best illustrate the purpose of the guide. We may edit or incorporate the image you use into a more formal social media thumbnail in the completed piece.

The main body of the guide is formatted in Markdown. The most used Markdown commands are included in the editor, but you can find a full list at https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet.

It is crucial that you break your content up with headings (H2, H3 and H4) to make it more readable - these headings will also appear on the left hand index for your tutorial or doc.

Do not use H1 headings - these are reserved for the main title of your tutorial (the title field).

When considering the title, think of what would make you want to read it. Include all the relevant keywords to attract a reader's attention.

We recommend including the following headings for the vast majority of tutorials and docs:

  • Introduction
  • Prerequisites / tools you need
  • Conclusion

Including images and screenshots

Images and screenshots are crucial both for improving the comprehension of your content, but also serve to break up long winded explanations and walkthroughs.

You cannot upload images directly using the markdown editor. Please host the images elsewhere, such as GitHub, and then we will rehost them for publication.

Length and word count

A guide should be as long as it needs to be - no shorter, no longer. The goal is to write in a purposeful and concise way, without any unnecessary musings or repeat explanations.

We do not pay for content by the word, but rather by how involved the technical writing process is, and the effort required. The fee will be at the editor's discretion. Find out more about payments in the payout structure section of this document.

Example tutorials

Please see the following examples of ideally formatted guides to adhere to.

Adding video

Including a relevant video will greatly enhance the quality of the guide so we encourage you to do so.

If you want to include an existing video hosted on YouTube you can embed the code into the Markdown editor. Please note that in your draft version preview, this will not render. But your video will appear as expected in the published piece.

If you want to record a new video, we can host this on our YouTube channel for maximum reach and can advise on the creation process. Please get in touch with your content editor or someone from our marketing team to discuss this at [marketing@civo.com.

Hosting of code

If the guide you are writing requires code to be used and if that code is too long to be displayed as part of the document itself, you can link to an externally-hosted repository when needed. Civo may opt to make a fork of this repository and store it as part of the main Civo organisational repository on GitHub to make sure it remains available.

Any code you reference for use in tutorials should be licensed to be freely used as such.

Submission and editorial process

To begin the process you’ll need to use the form at civo.com/write-for-us. Once you have sent your idea to us, someone from the Civo editorial team will be in touch via email.

If and when your idea has been accepted, you can then begin to write and format your tutorial/doc from your Civo account dashboard at civo.com/account/guides.

Once your guide is written, we recommend you run it through a spelling and grammar checker to root out any typographical errors. Many IDEs that handle Markdown have spelling highlighting plugins that you can use. You can then hit “save”.

Your draft learn guide has been saved but remains private. You may continue to make changes to this guide by clicking the 'edit' button, or view how the guide will look once published by clicking 'view'.

When you’re happy your tutorial/doc is complete and at the required standard, hit the “submit” button. Once submitted, the guide will be made available for review by Civo's administrators. Any significant changes required will be communicated to you, and we will work together to get the best version of the guide out.

We reserve the right to change the guide before publication as an official guide. Please be aware that you give us an irrevocable licence to use the content, amending it as we see fit (for example, for breaking version changes).

Once we're happy with how the guide reads, a Civo editor will publish the content for general consumption. The final published version remains separate from the version saved in your own tutorials list, and it's important to note that even if you delete your own version, the published version will remain.

Payouts

On average we pay around $300 (up to $500) per piece. This figure could be higher or lower depending on the type of content you produce, and the technical level required to create it.

Payout structure

The price we pay per tutorial/guide/doc is entirely at the discretion of the Civo editorial team. This fee will be agreed upon the completion of the content, before publishing.

The following rates are just representative and may change depending on the complexity and/or desirability of the content produced.

  • Tutorial / documentation around 1,000 words - $300
  • Concise, bare minimal documentation - $200
  • Technical how-to piece that solves a problem at 1,500 words - $400
  • Definitive long-form guide. Such as a beginners guide on a broad topic, over 2,000 words - $500

As mentioned earlier in this documentation, a guide should be as long as it needs to be - no shorter, no longer. The goal is to write in a purposeful and concise way, without any unnecessary musings or repeat explanations. Your content will be rejected if it is suspected of containing superfluous passages and repetition to bump up the word count.

Getting paid

Your fee will be paid via PayPal only or in Civo credit. We cannot offer any other means of payment. There are no exceptions.

When we pay out via PayPal we will use the "Paying for an item or service" option. We will not send your payment as a "friends or family" transaction. Civo is not responsible or liable for any PayPal fees you incur when claiming your payment.

Once a fee is agreed and your content is published, we will aim to pay you within 4 weeks of your publish date. But more often than not we will complete payments within 7 days.

Payments for edits

We also offer payment for edits on out of date content. Fees start at $100 for general edits and up to $200 for wholesale rewrites. Fees are dependent on the work required and are entirely down to the Civo editorial team.

If you are interested in editing and updating an existing document, please contact us at write@civo.com.

Payments for translations

We do not currently offer any payment for the translation of articles to other languages.

Historical content

We can not offer payment for content that was created prior to the “Write for Civo” program began. Likewise we can not offer payment for any content published that was not an “agreed topic” confirmed by a Civo content editor.

Commercial / OSS tutorials

Please note that we do not pay for tutorials / docs if the author represents a commercial tool or application, or an open source project.

This would be considered a co-marketing activity, in which case we would love to connect and discuss how we can work together. Contact us at marketing@civo.com.